James Zhijun Lu of Regenex Pharmaceuticals Ltd. in China is proposing to develop a thinner, affordable natural-latex condom for increased comfort and use to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

Bold Ideas for Big Shifts in Global Health

For the past six years we’ve made Grand Challenges Explorations grants – some for $100,000 for Phase I grants and others for $1 million for phase II grants – to fund scientific work on unproven ideas that could potentially be ground breaking in solving major global health and development problems.

Phase I $100,000 grants were awarded to research ranging from a project to make cows smell like humans to confuse insects that could give them diseases to an air infused female condom to a touch screen patient feedback system to help reproductive health clinics in Kenya serve their clients better.

Phase II grants are for a second round of funding to take a project even further. The three projects announced today were awarded additional funding totalling $2.3 million. The first two improve the vaccine cold chain – one from PATH that eliminates the need for vaccine freezing, and another from Nextleaf Analytics to continue work on a remote temperature-monitoring sensor. The third Phase II grant went to Brigham and Woman’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School for work on fighting neonatal brain injuries.

A full list of GCE projects and grant recipients can be found here. Applications for the next round of Grand Challenges Explorations will be accepted in September 2014. Also, stay tuned for some exciting updates in October on the next phase of Grand Challenges. For email updates with the latest grant opportunities for Grand Challenges in Global Health and for Grand Challenges Explorations, sign-up here.

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"Our desire to bring every good thing to our children is a force for good throughout the world. It’s what propels societies forward." —Melinda Gates

The Global Fund has helped to deliver more than 190 million bed nets to protect families from malaria.

"The world faces a clear choice. If we invest relatively small amounts, many more poor farmers will be able to feed their families." —Bill Gates, 2012 Annual Letter

"When it come to global health, Bill and I are optimists—but we're impatient optimists. Tremendous progress is being made. But there is still so much we're impatient to see done." —Melinda French Gates

In Senegal, 80% of households now have a bed net, helping the number of malaria cases there drop 50% in a single year.